IDA's "Doctober" Forecasts Oscar Winners With Awesome Slate

The International Documentary Association’s second annual internationaldocumentary film festival — dubbed “Doctober 2” — came to a close lastThursday evening. Held at the historic — and cavernous — StateTheater in Pasadena, the non-competitive festival programmed an eclecticslate of eleven films ranging in spirit from the sublime (“The LastDays”) to the serene (“Letters Not About Love”) to the strange (“CircusRedickuless”).

Designed to showcase some of the best documentary films from around theworld, the festival also offers the filmmakers the invaluableopportunity to qualify for an Academy Award nomination by giving eachfilm a full seven-day run. Last year, three films from the IDA festivalmanaged to land those coveted nominations — “Ayn Rand: A Sense ofLife,” “Colors Straight Up,” and “Still Kicking: The Fabulous PalmSprings Follies.” Though many of the weekend screenings attracted arespectable audience, attendance was modest, at best (the large venueprobably overemphasized this fact). Still, many of the filmmakers werepresent on Saturday to hold spirited Q&A sessions with members of theappreciative audiences, and there was a genuine feeling of emotionalinvolvement on the part of the audience and the festival programmersduring the run of the festival.

The grand, three-tissue weepy, “The Last Days,” was easily the mostlavish production at the festival, exquisitely photographed in 35 mm andbrought to you by executive producer Steven Spielberg and the ShoahFoundation. Directed by James Moll, the film examines the experiencesof five Hungarian Holocaust survivors, people who fell victim toHitler’s “Final Solution” during the last, grim year of World War II.Combining harrowing archival footage with present day interviews, thefilm manages to be both beautiful and horrifying, a painful yetultimately uplifting reminder of the strength of the human spirit. Sureto be a contender for, if not a recipient of, the Academy Award, thefilm has the added prestige of bearing the October Films banner andshould certainly be headed for healthy theatrical distribution.

Another contender for the Oscar is Barbara Sonneborn’s “Regret toInform,” a delicate, somber, heartfelt exploration of women who werewidowed by the Vietnam War. Twenty years after losing her husband inthe war, Sonneborn, an artist by trade, felt overwhelmingly compelled toseek out — and tell the stories of — other women who had experiencedthe same fate. The result is a deeply moving, extraordinarilycompassionate film. Combining archival footage and interviews with bothAmerican and Vietnamese widows, the film is effective, original, andraw. What it lacks in production value (compared to a film like “TheLast Days”) is more than made up for with skillful storytelling.

“In Search of Kundun with Martin Scorsese,” produced and directed byMichael Henry Wilson, was the other “big” documentary, financed by CanalPlus and the only one featuring people-we’ve-heard-of. Instead ofsettling for a typical “behind-the-scenes” documentary, however, thefilmmakers have created a thoughtful, well-researched companion piece tothe feature film. Martin Scorsese is always an articulate interview,but the film also profits from the insight of screenwriter MelissaMathison (“E.T.”), a minor expert on Tibetan culture and history (andwife of Harrison Ford, himself a figure in the cause for Tibetanindependence), interviews with members of the cast — all non-actors —and intimate conversations with the Dalai Lama himself. Mostimportantly, the documentary conveys a sense of the importance that“Kundun” carries as a cultural record of a time, place, and people thatChina has all but destroyed.

Falling into a more experimental arena was Vicky Funari’s “Paulina,”which screened at Sundance earlier this year. The film chronicles therecollections of a Mexican woman who escaped a life of rural abuse andpoverty by seizing her destiny, slowly carving out a difficult butrewarding life for herself and her daughter. Combining present-dayinterviews with recreated narrative sections, the film is ambitious andengaging, if not entirely successful.

Another film stretching the boundaries of the traditional documentaryform was Jay Rosenblatt’s “Human Remains.” An examination of theprivate lives of the World’s Greatest Dictators, Vol. 1, the filmcombines archival footage and narrated excerpts from the variousmanifestos and articles of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Franco, and MaoTse Tung. Bordering on the gimmicky, the film ultimately succeeds increating an audacious montage of sound and images that effectivelyportray the mundane, twisted, and absurd aspects of the lives of men whochanged the course of human history.

Also injecting a breath of fresh air into the documentary form was JackiOchs’ “Letters Not About Love.” Based upon written correspondencebetween two poets — one living in the Soviet Union, one living inNorthern California — this layered work of beauty and literature usesoriginal and archival footage to compliment the text of the letters,narrated by Lili Taylor and Victor Nord. Though enormously dense attimes, the film succeeds in merging the meditations on everyday words,such as “grandmother,” “window,” and “home,” with seemingly disparateimages.

Phillip Glau’s “Circus Redickuless” without a doubt took the cake as thestrangest, bawdiest, and funniest participant of the bunch. Thedocumentary follows a group of rag-tag, punk slackers who decided tofollow their friend, Chicken John, on a “punk rock circus” tour. Thingsgo from bad to worse as the participants limp through from venue tovenue in rickety, unreliable vans, and, more importantly, with no real“act.” Fighting breaks out among the disillusioned, inebriated, hungrytalent (to use the term loosely), and hilarity ensues. Despite theunlikely subject matter, the film is engaging, energetic, crass…and atestament to the filmmaker’s storytelling ability.

Rounding out the festival was Sienna McLean’s “Still Revolutionaries,”an interesting but all-too-brief exploration of two women’s involvementin The Black Panther movement; “P.I. Snaps,” by Monica Sharf, anoir-ish, amusing peek into the life of private investigator DempsterLeech, a former actor who now makes his living investigating thecounterfeit merchandise business, and a series of films produced underthe HBO banner, the commendable “Come Unto Me: The Faces of Guyton“; andthree others, “City at Peace“; “The Personals“; and “Thug Life in D.C.“